We play the long game here
by 0positiv
Summary: The Box Tunnel 20 weren't peaceful dead, they were vengeful and angry. And Lia was their spokeswoman, their face and voice and the focal point of their combined power.


**A.N:** Because I never really believed Lia was just any other dead girl. How would she have had the power to play with Mitchell when Annie could just go crazy in the waiting room? This is just my little headcanon about this. I hope you like it :)

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The last thing she remembered was the pain, and the fear. But mostly the pain. The feeling of skin and muscle and veins being ripped apart by teeth no human should have. No human should tear another's throat out with their teeth either so that's ok then, isn't it? They clearly weren't human. That man with madness in his eyes and the wild woman who had together taken over the train and killed every one on board. They drank their blood. Not all of it, of course because how could they have stomached the blood of ten people each, but some of it. She had felt the suction, the pull, of his mouth on her neck. Like her ex giving her a love bite only a hundred times more painful. She hated love bites. One of the reasons she'd broken up with him. Her ex that was, not the mad man on the train. He was hotter then her ex, though… How the mind wanders after death.

The next thing she remembered, after the pain, is standing in an endless corridor, surrounded by the other passengers and everyone was crying and sobbing and huddling together like they were one organism instead of 20. And that's how they were treated by those men, too. Like they all belonged together, like none of them could exist without the other. They were sent to a room together. It was like a crappy dentist's waiting room, all peeling off-white walls and scratched white plastic chairs. They were each given forms but just one pen. They had to take turns to fill out the forms. It took a long time because many of them were so shaken they could not write. Others filled out their forms for them, coaxing the answers out of them between hiccupping sobs and hours in which they were just staring into space, unresponsive and silent.

She thought the silence was worse then the sobbing and screaming. They looked like they were going mad then, the others. Rocking and staring like catatonics on tv. She sometimes thought she could _feel _them, the others, in her mind, like a constant background noise. Their fear and shock and denial and anger and rage. As time passed the shock and denial made room for more anger and rage. When it was finally her time to fill out the form she felt utterly calm. She thought all the emotions from the others had burned her own away, left her but a vessel for their combined hatred of those who killed them. It had reached a point where she herself saw them as just one being, one mind in 20 bodies, not a group of people but a swarm with a shared consciousness. All those facts about the others swirling around in her mind until she found it hard to filter out the information about her own life she needed to fill out this form.

There was Donna, the primary school teacher. A kind, gentle woman who loved all the children in her class as if they were her own. She missed them all, terribly. She watched them on the TV in the corner sometimes, saw them crying at her funeral service which sent her into a stupor for days. If it really were days. Time was not the same here as it had been in the living world, she soon realized.

Glen, the driver, had five kids. Three girls and two boys. The boys were identical twins and only three years old. His wife was the only one who could really tell them apart. Glen was sure his boys had a telepathic link, the way you read it sometimes in stories.

Mary was 74 and had only five days ago got the good news that she had beaten her breast cancer. She had invited her whole family, all six children and their children to a big party and she had never felt more happy in her life. She had been on the way to her youngest daughter who was pregnant again and soon to give birth.

And Andrew who played in a band and had his mp3-player rammed down his throat. They were supposed to have their first paying gig the week he was killed. He had bought new clothes and polished his guitar. He would never play it again.

And Lia, with a younger brother who annoyed her so much she screamed and slammed doors and hid in her room in a frothing rage. A younger brother she loved to pieces and who she would gladly have died for. That was her, Lia, she had to remember that. She could not forget that she was a person, too. That she was _one of them_, one of those 9 women and 11 men, not _all of them._

She had without meaning to _become them_, their representative, their spokeswoman, their voice and face and mind. The one holding their combined power. She knew their wished and intentions and their hunger for revenge without anyone of them saying even one word to her. And yet she was also still 22 year old Lia with a little brother and a little girl's bedroom who wanted to become a vet. She did not know why she had been chosen to speak for them, why her and not Charles with his easy confidence and authority or Clarice with her mothering ways who always had warm words and a hug for everyone who needed it.

Maybe it was because she was none of those things, because she didn't stand out, because she was like every one else, just as scared, angry and burning for revenge. The men with sticks and rope knew this, read it in their minds and their body language and heard it in their conversations. Lia knew she should be afraid of them and they sure looked creepy enough with their blank, non-descript faces and their white, white eyes. Yet she was not afraid because they were not the enemy. They did not want to hurt them, she knew, because they told her so. They would whisper in her mind without saying a word. They would tell her and the others that everything was going to be alright, everything was just fine if they filled out their forms and behaved and did as they were told. It would all soon be over and then they would all be able to rest.

But they did not want to rest. They wanted revenge, they buzzed with that need, that demand, like a hornet nest a boy had poked with a stick. They could never rest without having got their revenge. Even sweet Donna and kind Clarice would not hesitate to tear that mad man's eyes out with their fingernails should they ever get the chance. The watchers told them to quiet down, to wait and watch, that everyone got what they deserved in the end.

_We play the long game here_, they told her. _We do not seek revenge because fate has a way of putting the wrongs right, sometimes after death._

But when the mad man, Mitchell, stumbled so willingly into their domain the victims could be quiet no longer. She felt them pushing her towards him, felt the burning beacon of their power giving weight to her steps and actions. She felt _them_, all of them, shape the reality around her. And she felt the men with sticks and rope fight them for a moment and then give in, agree to their terms, even telling them about Annie and that Mitchell was here for her. Mostly because they were bored she thought and this promised to be entertaining. The watchers allowed them to use the corridors, Mitchell's corridor, his past, to get the revenge they craved. They allowed them to release Annie because it would cause Mitchell so much more pain.

The Chinese had a curse, _may you get everything you wish for_, Charles knew that one, not her, but she felt the hissing satisfaction from everyone as they learned it from him. The wolf-shaped bullet was just a lie but Mitchell's wish for redemption would make it real. There would be interesting times in his future.

_May you get everything you wish for._

_May you live in interesting times._


End file.
